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AFS Needs Help Curating Folklore in Wikipedia

AFS has begun a project to increase the quantity and coverage, and improve
the quality, of Wikipedia pages on folklore-studies topics, but the project
requires the assistance of AFS members. We all know that for many people
Wikipedia has become the customary initial source to search for information
about many topics. Given this reality, we believe that our best strategy is to
engage with Wikipedia.

Last summer, AFS interns Virginia Siegel and Kaitlyn Berle of Western
Kentucky University assembled an initial list of some 100 Wikipedia pages on
folklore-studies topics. (Our thanks go to Virginia and Kaitlyn for their
work.) You can find a PDF of their list at http://www.afsnet.org/resource/resmgr/Wikipedia_Survey.pdf.

information about existing Wikipedia pages, including personal pages, that
our initial survey may have missed.

folklore topics that need to be covered in Wikipedia but are not.

existing Wikipedia pages that are in need of improvement.

We also ask you to volunteer to work with us to revise existing pages or to
create new pages.

Once we have a more complete inventory of what is
currently available on Wikipedia, and have identified volunteers interested in
working with us, we'll create a plan and some basic Wikipedia-editing training
to make this increase-and-improvement project possible.

Comments...

Have you considered sponsoring Wikipedia-thons?--meetings at which people get together, get some training in how to research, structure, and write an entry and then sit together and get started? At UNC the American Indian studies folks did one and the art historians participated in a nation-wide event to write more entries on women artists. We could certainly get the library here to sponsor an event. What about holding these concurrently at all the schools that give graduate degrees in Folklore--a little friendly competition perhaps? Definitely happy to talk more about how to collaborate and raise our profile. --Patricia Sawin